Here are two entries from the Polycentric Order blog on “anarcho”-capitalism and its controversies. The first explores the issue of authoritarianism being more than just about aggression, specifically that land property itself is a form of authoritarianism. The second discusses why morally nihilistic Anarchism is not a viable position.
How do I relate all of this to the state? Well, above and beyond it’s aggressive origins and the questionable nature of its aquisition and maintainance of land, the state is problematic because of its exploitative function. It is an authoritarian institution. Aside from the questions of land aquisition, the only thing that meaningfully differentiates it from a land owner that exploits people is a matter of scale. Even if a land owner aquires their power consistently with the anarcho-capitalist norms for property aquisition, there still is the pressing question of their power. If their power, qualatatively speaking, cannot be particularly contrasted with the type of power claimed by a state, then in my eyes the land owner is a state for all intents and purposes. If someone “voluntarily” aquires a chunk of land and goes on to claim “ultimate decision-making power” over anyone that lives or occupies that area, I have trouble seeing how this meaningfully differs from a state.
To be clear, scale is completely irrelevant to my concern here. This is an issue of quality, not quantity. The area of land in question could be as small as an estate or as large as a “nation”, but the principle of the matter would be the same. A neo-lockean land owner that reduces other people to serfs is an archon, even if they do not have control over an area as large as modern nation-states. They don’t even necessarily need to be perpetually initiating aggression on their subjects – modern nation-states don’t even technically do that, they survive on the inertia of power and ideology in addition to aggression. States claim the legitimate power to establish whatever rules they want over everyone that inhabits a particular geographical area. For all intents and purposes, modern states are gigantic land proprietors. If a smaller scale land proprietor claims or excersizes the same or similar powers, it very well be or quickly turn into a state.
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I think that the concept that one who owns the land is somehow a ruler of all on that land is one I would reject. Some of my views may lean towards an an-cap or market anarchist lean, but I can not say I am completely in line with this.
I do not see how ownership of land gives one power over one on the land. Further if one were to say dig clay up from their land and have another form a bowl with this clay I would argue that clay would belong to the one who put their labor into that clay. The land owner dug the clay, so sure they have a small claim to the profit, but seeing how most of the labor came from the potter the potter or worker would hold the major claim to the profit.
This may be different under a contractual agreement.
The land can only be owned if it is used for production. Therefore one individual would be highly limited to the production they could accomplish, a collective would have more land than an individual and therefore more profit/wealth.
To claim that the ownership of the land gives one a power like a state I would argue against. It gives one the right to the product of the labor.
Even still the land owner would no longer own the land if they were not producing from the land the one who put labor into the land would have the right to the land….
At least I can say I do support some an-cap theories and stand strongly against the concept of a feudal land lord concept that seems to be presented in the above statement. That is simply another form of state under some false guise of property rights.
“I do not see how ownership of land gives one power over one on the land.”
Depends on the kind of ownership you’re talking about. In capitalism, it most definitely does.